Radionuclide generators are commonly used for the isolation of a daughter radioisotope from a parent radioisotope based on differences in the adsorption of the two radionuclides to an adsorbent in the presence of an eluting solvent. A problem associated with the adsorbents used in these generators is that they have fragile edges that tend to flake off as a powder during elution of the desired daughter radionuclide, and clog a filtration membrane located at the distal end of the chromatography column in which the adsorbent is disposed. As a result, the performance of the generator becomes significantly impeded. Furthermore, as the parent radionuclide may be adsorbed to the powder that is formed during elution of the daughter radioisotope, the purity of the eluted daughter radionuclide may be significantly compromised.
There is therefore a need for a method of pre-treating particles of an adsorbent used in radionuclide generators, which removes the fragile edges disposed along the periphery of the particles, to improve the performance of the radionuclide generators and increase the purity of the daughter radionuclide eluted from the generators.